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[Company of Heroes 2] Warfare on the Western and Eastern Fronts!

In the world’s darkest hour you are a commander of the Soviet Red Army, entrenched in brutal frontline warfare to free Mother Russia from the Nazi invaders. It is 1941 and the beginning of what will become the bloodiest conflict of World War II resulting in over 14 million military casualties. Witness the struggles of the Red Army from near defeat through their incredible triumph over Germany in the most challenging and costly theatre of the war, the Eastern Front. Your military tactics hold the power to tip the very balance of this conflict. Engage in tactical combat that will define you as a military leader and wield the might of the Soviet Empire as you smash your way to Berlin.
About Company of Heroes 2

Company of Heroes 2 takes the fight to the snow-filled fields of the Eastern Front as players command the Soviet Red Army during the World’s darkest hour. It is the year 1941, and the forces of Germany have just begun Operation Barbarossa, as they push East to conquer Russia in what would become the costliest conflict of the war. It is up to you, commander of the Russian Red Army, to push back the Nazi invaders and free Mother Russia!

Company of Heroes 2 raises the bar of the standard in PC Real Time Strategy. Powered by the new Essence 3.0 Engine, Company of Heroes 2 features incredible graphic fidelity and cutting-edge technology. With the unprecedented new TrueSight™ system, fog of war is no longer a guessing game as unit visibility on the battlefield relies on true and proper line of sight.

The tactical and dynamic combat system that strategy gamers know and love from the original Company of Heroes returns, and now it’s bigger and better than ever. With the new Commander Abilities found in Company of Heroes 2, players will develop and utilize their abilities in intense new tactical warfare situations. Players will get to experience the up-close moment-to-moment brutality of the war on the Eastern Front through new Dynamic Battle Tactics.

One of the most intense and competitive online experiences returns with Company of Heroes 2 multiplayer! The vicious online combat that thousands of gamers enjoy every day with the original Company of Heroes is bigger than ever featuring competitive and co-operative modes that deliver the intense experiences that fans have come to expect. Engage in visceral tactical combat that will define you as a military leader and challenge you to wield the might of the Soviet Empire as you smash your way to Berlin.

As someone who's played the tar out of DoW2, the reason the cover system occasionally got caught up on itself was primarily because it was a game with melee units, and played on (relative to CoH) smaller maps and at closer ranges. This made things like cover auto-seek a pain at times because your units would seek cover by heading towards those nasty melee units heading your way.

Largely fixed now, but it could really end you at the worst times. Even though a lot of the mechanics were lifted from CoH, they had to go through a long period of reworking, purely because of the fact that DoW2 has a heavy emphasis on melee units, which pretty much changes the whole dynamic. Throw in the extra lethal nature of the combat (squad wipes are FAR easier in DoW2, and with the smaller number of squads, often a lot more damaging), and you've got a mix for a whole load of problems.

So yeah, basically CoH side-steps those issues by default. At the very least without melee units, things like suppression mechanics and cover work a lot better without having to rig in a dozen different exceptions and tweaks.

EDIT: On a more general topic though, what worries me most about the prospect of CoH 2 is actually the graphics. One of the big problems that CoH had is that it was simply too system intensive for its market at the time, it priced itself outside of what a lot of people were able to play at a decent visual level and framerate. DoW2 released several years later, but was roughly as hardware intensive as CoH. By the time it had released, people had systems to match, and that's a part of the reason it did fairly well in comparison.

If they go overboard on the visuals (and I'd personally say they don't really need to push things too far at all really), they could end up with a repeat of the same problem.

But for reals though, CoH was good times. Even when it came out, I was pretty sick of WW2 shit, but the level of detail in an RTS blew me away and convinced me that this was the future of RTS. (The existence of Starcraft 2 later single-handedly refuted that thought.)

And it's about time they put in some god-damned Russians. If there's no anti-tank dog somewhere in there, I'll be a bit sad.

Actually, I wonder if CoH is going to be decent fodder for e-sports and casting. Relic would certainly do well to at least try and accommodate such things with their interface and online systems.

I like watching Starcraft 2 matches, but I don't really enjoy playing it. I enjoy Relic games a whole lot, and play DoW2 a whole lot, but DoW2 is either too compacted to make for good casts (1v1), or far too chaotic to follow (3v3). CoH on the other hand, is perfect fodder for this, slow paced enough that you have pauses in the action, but still fast paced enough and fun to watch when the action kicks in, with plenty of depth to the tactics and overall strategy of the game, and lots of scope for on-the-fly tactical changes and heroic squad plays.

- New Feature called "True Sight" You can only see what your units see.

Sounds awesome. I assume it means the fog is lifted only over your units' field of vision, allowing you to surprise someone from the flank without them being alerted to it by eyes in the back of their heads like in most strategy games. Also, tanks without commanders peaking out of the top would only be able to see out small cones.

I wonder if that will be awkward control wise though. Like, will you have to micromanage so that one guy is always checking the squad's rear, or maybe that will just be automatic.

Jephery on May 2012

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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".

- New Feature called "True Sight" You can only see what your units see.

Sounds awesome. I assume it means the fog is lifted only over your units' field of vision, allowing you to surprise someone from the flank without them being alerted to it by eyes in the back of their heads like in most strategy games. Also, tanks without commanders peaking out of the top would only be able to see out small cones.

I wonder if that will be awkward control wise though. Like, will you have to micromanage so that one guy is always checking the squad's rear, or maybe that will just be automatic.

Actually, the whole "true-sight" thing sounds extremely reminiscent of Men of War, which from how they're describing it, worked the same way. You only knew about what your units saw, and that made sightlines extremely important, you didn't just have a blob of circular vision.

This is just speaking of experience of the demos (and limited experience from the main, first game), but from what I played, in the original Men of War this did feel pretty tedious to me. When I played Assault Squad though I felt it was handled much better, your units didn't seem to have extreme tunnel vision so I didn't feel I was being flanked from ridiculous angles and extremely short ranges.

DoW II was extremely good in its own way, but also very messed up in a lot of ways. The whole "let's rebalance the entire game" thing they did was pretty stunning. I never enjoyed how they got rid of the cutoff mechanics from CoH, but obviously in CoH II we can expect to see that stuff back, so really, I'm excited.

One thing, and this may sound strange, but I'd like infantry to have combat knives. Make them do the exact same damage as guns, but when your troops and the enemy troops are literally one foot from each other, some melee animations would be cool. Maybe even on Shogun 2 melee animations cool. However, there isn't a difference between shooting someone and meleeing someone in terms of damage or use. Just a melee animation so I don't see guys with MP40's missing people 1 foot away three times and then finally hit. Usually they get close because of weird pathfinding the AI uses, but it still would be cool. Maybe Germans and Ruskii's can have bayonets.

Indeed, THQ has been having serious financial troubles lately. There's an article on gameindustry.biz confirming they won't have a booth at this year's E3 Expo, but will maintain a presence there.

Financially beleaguered publisher THQ will not have the big presence at this year's E3 Expo that it's had in the past. A spokesperson for the company told GamesIndustry International that there will be no THQ booth this year, but the publisher will still very much have a presence in a slightly more limited capacity.

"We're not producing a booth, but we will be participating in E3. We will be showing games to the E3 judges at their event coming up, and we'll be hosting a press and business center at the show for meetings (as well as participating with first party activities)," THQ told us.

"When we needed to make the decision on the booth (many months ago) we were in a MUCH different place than today. But, we will be there to support our portfolio and the show itself."

The costs associated with the construction and operation of a massive booth on the show floor can be exorbitant. In fact, we've heard that some of the bigger ones have cost upwards of $1 million. It's all about the spectacle, and that's something that THQ isn't in the best position to spend on right now.

Earlier this year, THQ laid off hundreds of employees and cut CEO Brian Farrell's salary in half; then more recently, THQ cut another 100+ employees while announcing a completely new single-player focus for Warhammer 40K (it costs a lot to maintain an online title, after all). On top of it all, the company still faces a possible delisting from Nasdaq by July 23 if it does not raise its stock price above $1 for 10 consecutive days.

THQ has certainly had a very big presence at E3 in the past with titles like Homefront, Saints Row: The Third, UFC and more, but right now the company just needs to make sure its upcoming core releases like Darksiders II are highly polished and generate some very healthy revenue.

Frankly, I'm nervous about Relic continuing to work with THQ under present circumstances, as they might be enticed to publish a variety of DLC content to help alleviate their financial woes. They've already set a trend with skin packs & wargear for Dawn of War Retribution. Would you want to see them charging for T-44 tanks, Katyusha rocket launchers, or MP maps as DLCs? Their antics with CoH Online and ToV's unlockable units does give cause for concern. Hopefully, they'd focus on polishing CoH2 to its highest quality, and revert to publishing standalone expansions (i.e. Opposing Fronts, Tales of Valor) instead.

Early this morning a delivery person showed up at my door with shocking news: HITLER BEGINS WAR ON RUSSIA. Either that was the world's most delinquent paper boy, or THQ really wants us to get excited about Company of Heroes 2.

Not only did THQ send me a FedEx wake-up call at 7AM, they also got me to translate Russian. The card accompanying this poster-sized piece of World War II nostalgia reads "Briefings begin May 7", indicating we're just three days away from the big reveal of the sequel to one of the greatest real-time strategy games of all time.

Well, aside from what's already been revealed via magazine scans.

I just wish THQ hadn't gone the newspaper route (*rimshot*) with this initial tease. It's not that I don't appreciate the significance of June 22, 1941. It's not that I hate history. It's the fact that the obsessive compulsive collector in me now feels I need to collect the entire set of 1941 cover sheets from The New York Times.

DoW II was extremely good in its own way, but also very messed up in a lot of ways. The whole "let's rebalance the entire game" thing they did was pretty stunning.

Basically this. I'd say DoW2 suffers from being an experimental middle child between DoW 1 and whatever ends up being DoW3. They broke away from the more traditional RTS structure that DoW 1 had, but they did it by taking on a lot of mechanics from CoH, which didn't really work out so well because they had to rework everything in order to get it working properly.

It also hurt it that the game shifted focus in so many areas over the years. The "There is Only War" update that basically revamped the whole gameplay system and how it was focussed. The shift from balancing for 3v3 matches to balancing for 1v1. Completely dropping GFWL and remaking the multiplayer architecture in Steamworks.

I mean they were all fundamentally necessary decisions to make, and they were made to the game's benefit. But I'm hoping this means that they've learned all their lessons from DoW 2 and have a really clear idea on how DoW 3 is going to be working now.

Another thought: I'm guessing that CoH2 is probably going to be Steamworks driven, given that's what they went with for DoW2 in the end. At the very least it means I won't be spending hours running through consecutive, massive patch installs.

I wonder if they'll have all factions from the previous game with ruskiis, being USA, Brits, Panzer Elite, and Wehrmacht. It was disappointing in DoW2 vanilla to go back to basics, and without Chaos. I would be happy if they got these in, and maybe more. Canadians could be a bridge between USA and Brit mechanics, Polish could be the Allies' Panzer elite, but with maybe more armored and slower but stronger vehicles. On Axis, you've got the Italians, and th Japanese. I'd make Italians the Axis British, as in the war it seemed they were always on the defensive. I would love it if the Japs could be the jack of all trades faction for the Axis. Germany's mechanic seems to be strong in fewer numbers and more lockdowns with bunkers giving them a defensive trait. Japs were well known to have traps and hidey holes for them to set up an ambush. However, how would you work in that they didn't surrender?

I think you're asking for a LOT with all those sides. I mean DoW2 had a heck of a time just attempting to balance the initial 4 sides.

In any case, in the original CoH they only allowed you access to the 'factions' that fought around that area. However, there does seem to be suggestion that there might be either an Africa or Pacific based element to the campaign, so you might still see the Japanese in.

In general though, I'd be really happy with them just starting off with just two sides and not trying to do more than that, at least not initially. Balance problems multiply quickly to ridiculous levels with each side added.

Well... Yeah you're right. However, the difference between War40k is that all the races are bad ass so we all want them. The nations of WW2, I wouldn't really care for Aussies, Chinese, or Arabs (Middle Eastern front Arabs vs Germans). Thought those would have novelty, you don't need them.

I don't need Poles, or Canadians, Italians. However, I feel there does need to be

Allies:
USA
Brits
Russia

Axis:
Wehrmacht
Japanese
(Maybe Panzer Elite or get rid of them for Italians)

3vs3 factions sounds good to me.

Edit: Although, for extra awesomeness, I want the captain of Able company at the end of COH1 to have Vodka with the characters of CoH2. He didn't leave much of an impression, but it would still be cool. Also if the Brother's in Arms characters make an appearance.

I am so happy right now, probably one of the only times since a long time I've ever been enthused about a WW2 game being announced. Best of all, to whoever it was I had the argument about Russians being added to CoH and Relic not doing it because Russia didn't count as "Heroes" (yes, they were that retarded) SUCK IT DOWN.

I so hope the T-34 tank driver shits his pants half as well as the Sherman tank driver does when he sees a tiger tank. Really looking forward to this game, I always and I mean *always* wanted Russians in CoH. Now I've finally got what I wanted!

Today, THQ and Relic are proud to announce the long-awaited sequel to Company of Heroes, the highest rated strategy game of all-time. Putting players in charge of the Soviet Red Army, Company of Heroes 2 will introduce players to the harsh realities of war on the Eastern Front.

COMPANY OF HEROES® 2 INVADES THE EASTERN FRONT
Sequel to Critically Acclaimed Strategy Game Coming to PC in 2013

AGOURA HILLS, Calif. May 7, 2012 – THQ Inc. (NASDAQ: THQI) today announced that a sequel to its critically acclaimed strategy game Company of Heroes® is scheduled to be taking gamers to the frozen frontlines of war in Russia in early 2013.

As a true sequel, this game moves the battle away from the common Western Front focus of World War II and refocuses on some of history’s most brutal and devastating conflicts on the Eastern Front, challenging players to take command of the iconic Red Army and repel the Nazi invaders from the very gates of Moscow.

Company of Heroes 2 utilizes Relic® Entertainment’s state of the art proprietary Essence 3.0 EngineTM to bring new technological advancements to the strategy genre in the form of innovative Dynamic Battle Tactics, increased graphical fidelity and new environmental destruction, ultimately putting the player in control with new Commander Abilities.

Greg Wilson, Producer at Relic Entertainment commented, “Company of Heroes 2 is a true successor, introducing a new front, new protagonists and new technology while retaining the unique mix of strategic gameplay and competitive multiplayer that made the original Company of Heroes such a success.”

Danny Bilson, Executive Vice President of Core Games commented, “We are excited to announce a sequel to one of THQ’s best loved properties. Company of Heroes 2 will deliver an amazing strategy experience along with a strong post-launch digital content plan that enhances and expands the product’s lifecycle.”

The original Company of Heroes was released in 2006 to critical acclaim and is currently the highest rated strategy title on Gamerankings.com (with more than five reviews) with an average of 93.82% based on 56 reviews. The game features similar acclaim on Metacritic.com with a Metascore of 93% based on 55 reviews.

Company of Heroes 2 is scheduled to be available for PC in early 2013. Keep checking back for more information.

About Company of Heroes 2

It is 1941 and the beginning of what will become the most brutal conflict of World War II, as Germany launches a full-scale invasion of the frozen tundra of the Soviet Union which would result in over 14 million military casualties. Take command of the iconic Soviet Red Army in brutal frontline warfare to free Mother Russia from the invading Nazis. Your strategic skills and tactical expertise hold the power to tip the very balance of this conflict in the sequel to the critically acclaimed and multi award-winning Company of Heroes. Engage in visceral tactical combat that will define you as a military leader and challenge you to wield the might of the Soviet Empire as you smash your way to Berlin.

I am so happy right now, probably one of the only times since a long time I've ever been enthused about a WW2 game being announced. Best of all, to whoever it was I had the argument about Russians being added to CoH and Relic not doing it because Russia didn't count as "Heroes" (yes, they were that retarded) SUCK IT DOWN.

I so hope the T-34 tank driver shits his pants half as well as the Sherman tank driver does when he sees a tiger tank. Really looking forward to this game, I always and I mean *always* wanted Russians in CoH. Now I've finally got what I wanted!

I hope they note that until the later years of the war the T-34 was actually superior to the German (and allied) alternatives. It began falling behind the German tanks towards the end.

Grey Paladin on May 2012

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence

I am so happy right now, probably one of the only times since a long time I've ever been enthused about a WW2 game being announced. Best of all, to whoever it was I had the argument about Russians being added to CoH and Relic not doing it because Russia didn't count as "Heroes" (yes, they were that retarded) SUCK IT DOWN.

I so hope the T-34 tank driver shits his pants half as well as the Sherman tank driver does when he sees a tiger tank. Really looking forward to this game, I always and I mean *always* wanted Russians in CoH. Now I've finally got what I wanted!

I hope they note that until the later years of the war the T-34 was actually superior to the German (and allied) alternatives. It began falling behind the German tanks towards the end.

I'm not sure you quite understand how Company of Heroes handles realism, but tanks have health bars so really I wouldn't look for them to be balancing the T-34 based on anything other than gameplay factors.